5x100x200
by iphis15
Summary: Two hundred words for each prompt of the five variations of the 100 theme challenge. T for Language, Insinuation, and homoerotism, with the occasional hint of heteroerotism. Too many pairings to list.
1. 1:001:introduction

Written 2013 - June - 07.

* * *

><p>Sometimes Clarabelle is good with meeting new people and sometimes she isn't, and the thing about it is that she's never going to be sure which is which, because sometimes she can gauge the future like it's all splayed out before her and sometimes she can't. It's a problem, but everything's a problem in her life.<p>

She's used to that by now, used to going into every day blind because she's never been taught the right way to see, and even if she has a good feeling about people sometimes that doesn't mean that they won't do bad things to her, and even if she has a bad feeling about someone that doesn't mean that they aren't good.

Or something.

It's all confusing and scary and she doesn't like thinking so much - doesn't like twisting her mind into strange shapes. So she breathes deep and draws a big, vacant smile on her face, and she lets her thoughts sink deep into her and her positive energy bubble up, and it doesn't matter what kind of feeling she has about people if people write her off as nothing from the first time they meet her, and this is how Clarabelle copes.


	2. 1:002:love

My heart and my head are giddy. The pulse I'd thought I'd lost is racing, and my vision is blurring from absolute joy.

Is this love?

Every time I close my eyes, I see her face, her every gloriously lovely feature captured almost faithfully by my flawed memory, burnt forever against my eyelids by the pure rapture I felt on meeting her, at last.

It's sort of ridiculous, isn't it? After all, I'm old now. Respectable. Besides, all this should have ended when he bit me, when he hurt me, when he made me like him.

I thought that Vampirism was meant to be an end to lusts, not the start of new ones. That's what I assumed, when the men all started to look the same, after Moloch changed me.

And now, there's her. She of the doe-like eyes, the wide-open smile, the impossible cheer. She in the all-black clothing, she surrounded by the shadows, the darkness, she the great, she the _powerful…_

I thought I lost it, when I died the first time. I never thought I'd meet someone who made me feel quite this way again.

Now, there's only her. That one girl. Only her.

Valkyrie Cain.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Vampirism equating homosexuality- _very_ unfortunate implications there.**

**~Mademise Morte, April 26  
><strong>


	3. 1:003:light

She wishes she could become a bird. It's not so she could fly away from her troubles, though that might actually be nice, or so that she could be closer to nature or some other New-Age shit.

No, Crystal Edgley wishes she could become a bird for the hollow bones.

The compulsive calorie-counting could only take her so far, after all. Now, everything counts. Even hair, even muscle, even blood.

She is trying to whittle herself away, hollow herself out, remove all the weights and pressures and anchors that are binding her to this world, keeping her human and weighing her down.

_Chop_! Away with the long, luxurious hair. It is now short, and an unnatural shade of red. Her mother disapproves.

She couldn't care less about what her mother thinks about her, and what she's become. She really couldn't.

In the end, she doesn't really want to become a bird. Even a bird has a body, has substance, even birds can be weighed down, even hollow bones are heavy.

No. In the end, she doesn't want to be a bird. In the end, all she wants is weightlessness. In the end, all she really wants is to be dead.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Not a lesbian pairing, this time, but at least it's Crystal... Right? XD**

**~Mademise Morte, April 27  
><strong>


	4. 1:004:dark

When she was younger, she was terrified of the lack of light, and everything within it. She would be shaking and shuddering with fear whenever she had to venture out into the darkness unaccompanied, and still pathetically terrified when she wasn't alone.

Now, it has a different meaning for her. Now, the night is warmth and the smell of white musk, which is incidentally the scent China Sorrows wears. It is silk against skin, it is the whisper of flesh against flesh, it is illicit kisses stolen whilst guarded away from sight, just away from the bounds of permissibility.

It is the glint of ebony-dark hair against ivory skin, moonstone blue eyes caught by starlight, shell-pale lips curved into a delicious smirk. It is black lingerie, darker than the dark itself, and it is passion and power and love.

It has become so much a part of the one that she loves, inseparable from her, in her mind's eye, that now Clarabelle cannot bring herself to particularly mind the lightless hours. Indeed, these days, she finds that she even looks forward to them, just as much as China Sorrows herself does.

The dark is their moment, and their moment alone.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: China/Clarabelle. It is now a recurring theme.**

**~Mademise Morte, July 1  
><strong>


	5. 1:005:SeekingSolace

"I'm scared, Davina." Even to herself, her voice sounds weak, brittle, faded. The lack of food must be getting to her, after all. Funny, she thinks dully, that she has been thrown into the world of magic and assassins and people out to kill her, and she's dying from an eating disorder.

"So am I, love. What exactly would you like me to do about it?" Even to herself, her voice is too harsh, too coarse, too loud. It's too much what she's been trying to be, and what she's been trying not to be. It disturbs her, vaguely.

"Something. Anything. Kiss me, kill me, whatever. Just… Make it stop. Take away the pain." Crystal begins to laugh, too high and too empty. She finds that she can't stop, even when she's out of breath, and so she just sits there, skeletal frame shaking with an empty mirth.

Davina Marr looks upon the face of the girl she loves, all sunken, snowy skin and high cheekbone, and she wishes, more than anything, that she could. She can't though, and that is tearing her apart inside.

"I'm sorry."

"Like Hell you are." Crystal has regained breath, it seems.

Davina kisses her.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: In an alternate reality, Crystal/Davina is the most psychotic, destructive, twisted thing ever, and I love it to pieces.**

**~Mademise Morte, July 1  
><strong>


	6. 1:006:BreakAway

The world around me is gray.

The sky is empty of color, is nothing but a mass of swirling clouds, neither shaded with all colors nor the absence thereof, but that impossibly annoying, indeterminate tone.

The people are empty of meaning. The last original thought was centuries ago – even this has been contemplated a hundred times. There is nothing new, anymore, nothing special. Life is empty, and life is gray.

Everything is, apart from her.

There is something about her smile, about the way she moves and laughs and lives, that is completely fresh, completely different. She's a shot of electric blue, of neon pink, in the world of grayness. Perhaps my judgment of her is clouded by my love, but I don't think so. No one could deny the effect she has on the world around her.

She ripples with energy, with joy. She is vibrance and she is light. When I am around her, my world is colorful once more.

I will never stop loving her. She _is_ my life now. When she ends, my world will.

My life thread is inseparable from hers now. The one, the only, Tanith Low.

If only I thought she could reciprocate.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I actually have no clue who the narrator is.**

**~Mademise Morte, July 2  
><strong>


	7. 1:007:heaven

I used to worry a lot about heaven. Religion in general, actually, since that was always sort of difficult for me to understand. I was raised by heathens, after all.

I wondered if it really existed – and, if it did, would I get in? If it was the sort of place that not many people could go to, then would it really be heaven?

Did you know that some people believe that the outermost circle of Hell is a place for the virtuous pagans, where those amazing people who might not have been Christ-followers will dwell for the rest of eternity? I always thought that that sounded cool.

Now, though, I don't spend so much time pondering the mysteries of Heaven, because I've found it.

Heaven is wherever you are, Valkyrie. It is being close to you, it is seeing the beauty that is your face, it is touching your soft flesh. My personal heaven is a person, and it is you.

So, I suppose I lied. I do wonder about heaven after all, because I want to know what I am to you. I want to know if you feel the same about me.

Do you, my dearest heart?

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Caelan/Valkyrie. If it makes you feel better, imagine Caelan as a girl. That's how I coped.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, July 1  
><strong>


	8. 1:008:innocence

Murder Rose knows two things about innocence.

Firstly, that it is something that she singularly lacks. She'd like to think she never had it, and this is maybe even true. She can't remember a time when she ever thought that the world was overall a pretty nice place, can't remember ever seeing anything through rose tinted spectacles.

Secondly, that it is something her girlfriend possesses in large quantities.

There is something about Clarabelle's innocence that permeates everything about her. It shines through in her unblinking eyes, makes itself obvious in the slip of her pale skin and the curve of her smile, in the twist of the ankle and the precious space in between the top of knee-socks and the hem of a mini-skirt. It is the shoujo sparkles that insinuate themselves wherever she is.

More than that, it is her unwavering belief in her lover. It is the fact that, despite it all, she thinks that the twisted, mangled thing Murder Rose calls a soul is still redeemable, still beautiful. This, Murder Rose thinks, is what innocence truly is.

Maybe so, but even more than that, it is Murder Rose's own belief that is the innocence, in Clarabelle's eyes.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Zettai Ryouiki is absolute.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, July 3  
><strong>


	9. 1:009:drive

After century after century of working selflessly to save lives and to keep possible a future that includes living, healthy human beings, she has lost something. Motivation, maybe. Her passion is gone, as surely as if it were the sound of a heart monitor on a corpse.

She continues working, because there is a total lack of desire, either to stay or to go. She is drifting, without her purpose. She works aimlessly, waiting for the cause she must champion.

She finds it, in the form of one Valkyrie Cain. From the moment she set eyes on her, when she was laboring under Kenspeckle, with her mind all but shut off, she knew that she had found the one she'd do anything for, be anyone for. Finally, she had her driving factor, the thing that would keep her happy and alive as she had kept so many others afloat.

It's difficult, getting back into the rhythm of being a thinking human being, shaking off the sleepy, dozy haze she has fallen into, forcing herself to think once more. It's almost even painful, at times. She manages it, though, because there is nothing that Clarabelle wouldn't do for the one she loves.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: The ninth drabble and only the first Valkyrie/Clarabelle? Huh.**

**~Mademise Morte, August 1  
><strong>


	10. 1:010:BreatheAgain

The hopes and dreams and expectations of others are weighing her down, and as much as she clutches against her lover, there is nothing that can take away the terrible, terrible pressure, nothing that can distract her from the way her heart is aching.

"Be still, my love. It'll all be okay in the end." She smiles a gentle smile even as she lies through her teeth.

"You're named after a prophetess whom no-one ever believed. I don't believe you now, but I hope, desperately, that you are truly like that Cassandra. That your prophecy is true. Just not believed."

"It's nice to hear that you've been paying attention to my stories."

"Of course I have. They're amazing. Like you."

"Flatterer." The older woman laughs softly.

"It's true." Her smile is truly innocent, and, in the moment of perfect peace, of joy and wonder and love, she has all but forgotten her worries and her pains and her troubles. She cannot feel the heartache and she cannot hear the nagging demands of those who so desperately need her help, those who are tearing her down without trying, without even realizing.

When she is with Cassandra, Carol can finally breathe again.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I don't know about you, but I'm pretty impressed by the sheer twistedness of this pairing.**

**~Mademise Morte, August 1  
><strong>


	11. 1:011:memory

Sitting at my tidy little desk and sorting out my stationary, I stare at the pitted, off-white wall and think of her lips.

In the depths of my filthy, twisted, firmly gutter-bound mind, I remember her face, reduced to the simplest lines, the most basic factors, that can be multiplied out and expanded into their purest form. Pink and soft and sweetly rounded, as I recall, set so neatly into her lovely face.

Sad to say, this is one of the purer flights of recollection I tend to have with regards to the woman we are all in love with, the lovely Miss China Sorrows. Most of the time, I am contemplating other things, along vein of her slim wrists, or her lovely eyes, or the way her shirts strain against her chest.

I must confess, it is generally the last.

I know she doesn't really notice me, but that's okay, because no one really does. I suppose I fade into the background or something. I've been watching her since I was really young, though.

One day, I, Zephyr, am going to become the best warrior in the world, just so I can protect her, the one I've always loved.

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><p><strong>AN: Young!Zephyr :D**

**~Mademise Morte, August 13  
><strong>


	12. 1:012:insanity

The voices in my head clamor and yell and scream. It is all I can do not to launch myself off the edge of the cliff, like a diver at the swimming pool, although my feet won't contact water, and I would not make my way out of it alive.

The words they are speaking are absolutely maddening. They are begging for me to save them. I want to tell them that I can't, that there's nothing that I can do, because they're dead and I'm not a Necromancer. I don't have magic at all, for God's sake – I'd tell them the sordid story, but I know they won't listen.

There's already something wrong with my head, since I can't use that tiny little drop of potential we all know I have. I mean, I have to have some potential, since all my family does. It's like there's a part of me that's locked up, and no one has the key. No one even knows if the key exists.

_I'm sorry. I can't help you. I'm just another useless, empty, smiling face. I'm broken, like a discarded doll. I can't even use metaphors instead of similes._

_I'm so, so sorry._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Another perspective on the whole Clarabelle thing, I suppose.**

**~Mademise Morte, August 13  
><strong>


	13. 1:013:misfortune

I tripped on the stairs again today.

Or rather, I say _tripped_, but I really mean _fell_, because even though I'm just another good-for-nothing klutz, my footing was perfectly fine. I was even holding the railing. I should have been fine, just this once.

I fell, and I dislocated my shoulder and cracked one of the bones in my leg, and I looked up, and there was no one there. I felt it, though. I felt the hand on my back, and the force of the push, even though logic dictates that there was nothing but empty air there. There might have been footsteps, running away, that I didn't hear through my pain, but I doubt it.

I could tell someone all this, but then I'd not only be careless, I'd be delusional, or attention-seeking. No one would believe me, anyway – not the crazy little airhead. Not Clarabelle.

I lie here in bed with my computer, my leg in a cast and my back and shoulders aching, and I try and remember. Was there a shadow in the corner, a giggle hovering in the air? Did I feel so much as a whisper of another's presence?

Am I just unlucky?

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Heheh. x3**

**~Mademise Morte, August 13  
><strong>


	14. 1:014:smile

I smile, and the expression is cool, calm, relaxed, everything I strive to be when I'm around you. I'm really nervous, though. I'm sweating, and my heart is racing, and all I want to do is look away, because the sight of your face is driving me absolutely mad.

You're really pretty, Tanith. I think you know that as well as most – I mean, it would be impossible not to, right? And yet, you can jokingly complain about being too restless, too muscled, too wild for any sane person's liking.

Trust me, my love, you aren't. You're just perfect the way you are, though I am perhaps not the best example of sanity. Some of us _like_ that about you – the freeness of your soul, your love of life and living, your insatiable wanderlust and need for adventure. _I _like that.

You're wonderful. You're something different, something special. You've got a wonderful mind, and a beautiful body, and such a sweet, untainted, pure heart. It makes me feel a little sick, when I think how filthy I am to consider you in such a light, when I'm so twisted, but it's true.

My smile gives away nothing of this, though.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: She hopes.**

**I really love valith, don't you?  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, August 13  
><strong>


	15. 1:015:silence

The thing about Cassandra's house is that it's never as quiet as you'd have thought.

Even without the Whisperers, the ticking of the clock, the bubble of a kettle on the brew, the hum of a tired old guitar, there's something fluid, something alive, about it, something that constantly sounds. It's distracting, but you eventually become accustomed.

It's like the way her eyes never rest on you fully, the way her attention is always drawn to a thousand different moments in time. It is incredibly annoying, and not a little unnerving, but soon you hardly notice it at all. You accept the little quirks, because they're part of the whole.

Cassandra's not really here at the moment. She's acting as a beacon, a focus, for the lost, lonely little dreams. She's sitting cross-legged on the floor, and even with her eyes shut, you can see them darting around. She's neither here nor there, not now nor then.

It's kind of sad, but I can't imagine her being any other way. I have no chance with her, it's true, but no one really does, because the day the house is silent, the day she's fully present, is the day she dies.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I'm not really all that sure who the narrator is. I never am, these days.**

**~Mademise Morte, August 23  
><strong>


	16. 1:016:questioning

There is something so delicious about Valkyrie's expression right now: the hint of a frown about her delicately shaded brows, the lilt of a suspicion to her eyes, the tint of a question about her lips. It's so sweet, and so, so tempting.

She always is, of course – being around her is an exercise in self-control, on being able to not just deteriorate into raptures over her every feature. It's not easy, but it's probably worth it. After all, it's her.

"What exactly do you mean?" she asks, and her voice is lovely too – syrupy and warm and so very like the sunlight.

I smile back at her. I could theoretically try to explain, but that would remove the beauty of her confusion, of her stumbling uncertainty. It would deprive me of the pride in knowing that I had completely befuddled her, brought to her face the beautiful symmetry of this emotion. It would take away the joy of being able to stare at her, eyes wide and heart pounding far much fast for comfort.

And then, of course, there is the fact that I don't really know what I meant. Or, come to think of it, what I said.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I really like Clarabelle's perspective.**

**~Mademise Morte, August 23  
><strong>


	17. 1:017:blood

There is blood on my hands.

The color is far too sharp, too bright, too distracting. It is a smear, a stain, a taint against my skin, a horror, an abomination.

It is slimy, and the feeling of it is enough to make my head spin, or want to. It's mostly the inconsistency of it all – in some parts, it's thin and fast and cold and _moving_, but in others, it's heavy and thick and it _sticks_. I can't begin to think which I hate more.

Probably both.

It's ridiculous, isn't it? I'm Zephyr. I'm one of the best fighters in the world. I shouldn't be squeamish about having blood from a vanquished enemy on my hands.

Apparently I am. It's been a while since I bothered with knives. Guns are so much tidier, though you couldn't exactly say they don't leave a mess. It's different, though. You can be distanced, with guns.

There's also the fact that this isn't quite the blood of a vanquished enemy. It's been too long since it was someone on my side getting hurt. I'd forgotten the feeling, of tending to a fallen friend.

She'll be okay, though. She is, after all, Tanith Low.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I think that you could pretty safely say that no-one has ever written this pairing before.**

**~Mademise Morte, August 23  
><strong>


	18. 1:018:rainbow

Zephyr's hands are clenched into fists, and she is having trouble concentrating on the smiling blonde girl's face. They're both fairly nervous, but that's not why Zephyr is staring at Clarabelle's wrist.

No, that is caused by a haphazardly knotted rainbow bracelet.

It's not like Zephyr's never met other Sapphists before. She's met loads of them, since she came to Ireland from the small town in Japan where she was born and where she was trained in the martial arts and magic alike. It's simply that she never met any as beautiful as Clarabelle, or so she thinks.

It's something about the delicacy – not feigned, so as to appear sweet and appealing, but truly there, truly innocent and truly tempting. It's about how the girl's thin, long fingers are clutched tight, how she looks every bit as nervous as Zephyr feels, how sweet her aura is.

Clarabelle's stare is similar. It's not that she's never met a fighter before – she's seen many, in her years at the Sanctuary. All the same, it must be said that none of them, from the busty, hourglass-figured women to the tough, muscled men, could ever have pulled off leather clothing quite like Zephyr does.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I really loved writing this one.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 4  
><strong>


	19. 1:019:gray

The gray of the stormy sky is all-consuming, leaving nothing without its shadows, allowing nothing to escape its rage. The two girls giggle as they duck under the eaves of a modern house. They don't much mind the rain. Indeed, they look like its children.

The taller is strong and bold and a little bit of a bitch. Her smile is unflinching, and her movements have in them not the faintest trace of any hesitation. She is a stormcloud, something as undeniable and primeval as time itself.

The slighter has trusting, wide unblinking eyes and her shoulders are twisted just so. She's hardly there at all, hardly more than a yielding little slip, barely more than a fey silhouette in the deeply cut backdrop of falling water. She is as delicate and lovely as the perfection of a snowflake, perhaps, and has that same sense of a threat. Her laugh is innocuous, and yet it is chilling.

"You're soaking wet." Valkyrie's grin is suggestive, darting and light. The tilt of her eyes is both impish and charming.

"I could well say the same of you." There is little humor to Clarabelle's statement. "Would you like to do something about it?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Yay for insinuation. Though in all fairness, they're probably deadly serious.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, September 12  
><strong>


	20. 1:020:fortitude

I've always admired your strength, Crystal.

I mean, let's face it. You've always been the courageous one. You're the one who tells the idiots around us that they _are _idiots, you're the one who will fend off classmates and relatives alike, you're the one who defied mother time and time again. You're the strong one.

You managed it, Crystal. You figured that everyone had a reason for calling us fat, and you fixed it. You starved yourself until you were just skin, bones and bitterness, like the girl in the song by the band that mother hated so dearly and that you managed to get the albums of anyway. You rebelled, and you won.

You were fabulous, Crystal. Your fortitude amazed me, as it always had.

But now, I'm standing at your hospital bed, and I'm trying not to cry, because you took it just a bit too far, just a notch too high, and now you don't look so amazing. What were you really, Crystal? Was it all worth it? Even unto this?

I'm sure you think it was. But the kind of strength it's taking me to stop myself from breaking down? That's more than you ever had.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: The referenced band is _Angelspit_, the song _Skinny Little Bitch._ Which is by the way totally Crystal's theme song.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 2  
><strong>


	21. 1:021:vacation

Your eyes are empty, your smile distant, and so I know that you're far off in the world of your own imagining, that beautiful, beautiful world where everything's pure and clean and where you aren't dying. Where no one is dying.

I can't help it. I have to smile, and I have to feel a bit like I'm breaking apart at the seams, because if I don't, then I'll have lost, and if I don't, then I won't remember that we're still firmly grounded in reality.

Trust me, dearest heart, I would very dearly love to join you in your world of fantasies. It would be amazing, to be able to share in that precious escape, even for the shortest of vacations. I can't, though, because if I left, I'd never be able to return. I know it, and if you were ever lucid enough to be aware of my presence, then you'd know it too.

I know that you can't hear this, but I need to thank you, for giving me my escape when I needed it most, when Finbar had only just died. Thank you for being my real-life fantasy. Thank you so much, Cassandra, for saving me.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I actually do not know why I love Sharon/Cassandra so much. I just do, I suppose.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 1  
><strong>


	22. 1:022:MotherNature

There's a look of complete and total serenity on her face, an absolute sense of peace, of stillness, of happiness. Her world is perfect, and there's nothing that could hurt that. The light that filters through the leaves of the trees tints her skin and hair a light green, and she truly resembles a faerie of some sort, or so thinks her lover.

The lover has red hair and angular bone structure. Instead of looking like a lady of the spring, of new life, she looks like autumn. Like death, like falling asleep and never waking up, like laughing because you just can't conjure up the tears any longer.

They are, however, united by their love, and, even more than that, by the call of Lady Earth, the Allmother, the one who birthed them and houses them and keeps them together and somewhat sane and entirely alive, and so it is that Crystal is singing, song carried about the forest on the air, and that she is falling deeper in love with every second of her life that passes by, and so it is that Clarabelle is staring back, steadily and calmly and joyously, and falling in utterly love too.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I like this motif. Makes the pairing seem less crazy.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 7  
><strong>


	23. 1:023:cat

Sinuous and quick are Sharon's movements as she stretches herself over backwards and yawns. Mist can't help but to laugh a little at her lover's look of utter peace, of absolute, lazy contentment, and the twitching, catlike little smile. "You are just too adorable for words," she informs the other woman soberly, and gets a widening of the Cheshire-grin in response.

There is quite a bit about Sharon that is rather feline, though, reflects the love of her life. Her lack of loquacity, for one thing, the rather feral edge that touches her when impassioned and the complete and total calm that surrounds her. At times, there is something about the woman that makes you want to hug her, somehow, and on other occasions, she looks like she'd scratch your eyes out if you did.

It is this contrariness, this sheer lack of concern for most, that first attracted Mist to the bizarre, quirkish woman, but in the end, it was really the fact that, for a small part of her life, in every moment that the two were in each other's company and none else's, she was consistent in her devotion to her lover, and even that was catlike.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I like this pairing very much, though referring to Mist by her last name alone is slightly awkward...**

**~Mademise Morte, December 3  
><strong>


	24. 1:024:NoTime

She is running, and she cannot breathe. It is the strangest feeling, like she is suddenly being pressed down by the air itself, like she cannot move, only that she can, she must be able to, because she is still racing desperately towards the hospital.

She is running, and she cannot breathe. She hears the sounds of the world around her distantly, as if through a haze. She hears a clock ticking, and each small noise is a taunt, a torment, a stinging little barb that sinks deep below her skin. She wants to stop, to collapse, to weep and cry and surrender, but she cannot allow herself to, because there's a chance that she can still make it.

She is running, and she cannot breathe, because now her phone is ringing. She digs it out of her pocket, and she stops now, standing at the foot of the hospital, staring upwards and listening to her life being taken away from her. She has run out of time, and her desperate journey has been for nothing. She shudders, no longer hearing the comforting voice, and she falls to the ground in her misery.

She is still, and she cannot breathe.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: This is Tanith, and the deceased lover is Valkyrie. Just for the record.**

**~Mademise Morte, December 14  
><strong>


	25. 1:025:TroubleLurking

When Valkyrie Cain collapsed in battle, coughing violently and spitting blood, Tanith Low was surprised. Shocked, even, though this was one of the few times in Valkyrie's extended period of illness that she was caught off guard. Thereafter, she was prepared, calm. She was determined that if the life of the one she loved had to be upturned, then she would make herself a constant, something that could be trusted.

That was the first surprise, something to mark the Hell her existence became out. The second time was also the last. The surprises were, in this case, much like bookends.

She was standing in the hospital room, watching Valkyrie rest. Her dark-haired, wide-eyed lover had suddenly shoved herself up, and she smiled at Tanith, and she requested, calmly, that Tanith go to Valkyrie's house and retrieve something for her – her Necromancer ring. Tanith wasn't surprised by the nature of the request, because she was sent often to fetch things, but by the request itself. What use had Valkyrie for death magic now?

Still, dutiful, Tanith had trotted off to get it, and when she was on her way back, she got the call. She never returned to that hospital room.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Kind of a prequel to the last one.**

**~Mademise Morte, December 14  
><strong>


	26. 1:026:tears

She is fairly good about it, most of the time. She smiles a lot, and she lives her life as fully as she can, whatever remnants of it she has. She has taken up the guitar again, and while it blisters her hands and makes her hurt, it is getting easier.

Her visions continue. She hates them, wants them so very desperately to stop, but somehow they don't. Bitterly, she thinks of how, when she needed them the most, they failed her, and now that she has no desire to entertain them, they flock to her. She despises them, and so she isolates herself, trying to hide, if not from the predictions, then at least from those that they would damage.

Because she knows. Cassandra Pharos knows. You'd think that she wouldn't, but she does. She is aware of how easily the things she sees could ruin lives, tear them into tiny little shreds, reduce them into meaninglessness, deconstruct them until they are nothing left.

She knows this for a fact, knows it in her head and in her heart and in her bones. Her life, her very existence, was one of those things that suffered the most, after all.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I really love the structure of this one, for some reason.**

**~Mademise Morte, January 20, 2012.  
><strong>


	27. 1:027:foreign

The charming-cheerful-childish girl with the large, wondering eyes and the bright, wide smile is a stranger to this life still, a stranger to this world, and yet her assimilation seems to take no time at all. Looking at her, you'd think that she'd be a total alien, with her pale complexion and her odd manners, but you would be mistaken. She has friends, and she fits in, somehow.

It took her a while, of course. England had been a horrible fit for her. It had made her sad, with its weather and its people and its clamor. Ireland is good, though. She likes Ireland.

She likes her benefactor, her employer, the kindly old scientist-sorcerer who puts up with her in the end. She likes her job, with its tidiness and its temperature-controlled rooms. She likes her coat, for all that it's Hell to wash.

She loves the girl with the dark hair and the fabulous clothes, with the reckless grin and the chilling gaze. She loves her from the moment she sees her, and that is when everything that is otherly about her disappears, because it is in the company and of Valkyrie Cain that Clarabelle has found her home.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Everything is better with the word 'fabulous'.**

**~Mademise Morte, January 20, 2012.  
><strong>


	28. 1:028:sorrow

There are tearstains on her cheeks, and that is how she feels – like so much parchment, thin and useless and under assault, falling apart at even the smallest thing.

Her arms are wrapped around herself, and she cannot stop shaking. She is scared.

Things like this don't happen to people like her. She has heard it time and time again, from people she trusted and people she never did, people who say it to her face and people who whisper it behind her back. She hears it from them, and the echoes in her head, and it weighs down on her, and she is tearing, like so much parchment.

She was meant to be strong, she tells herself. She was meant to be great. She could have been great. Maybe in the future, she'll still get there, because she is still young, can yet become powerful. Perhaps one day she will rise above all this, become more than she is.

But for now, she is just falling and breaking under the pressure of the things that should never have happened, that she still cannot bring herself to believe ever happened.

Right now, she is breaking, like so much fine china.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: If you want to interpret this as rape and miscarriage/abortion, please feel free to do so. If you just want to think of her as being sad, feel free to do so as well.**

**~Mademise Morte, February 25, 2012.  
><strong>


	29. 1:029:happiness

The rain is torrential, it is cold, it is unwelcome, and more than anything else, it is absolutely miserable.

Clarabelle, of course, adores it. She is laughing, because she tends to do that when she's feeling particularly emotional, and she is also crying because she just cut her leg on something unpleasant that's probably going to give her some strange disease, and she is dancing because she just doesn't care, quite unlike the plants she is squishing underfoot.

The rain is torrential, cold, unwelcome and rather miserable, but China doesn't care. She also doesn't care that she is sitting out here, in the old playground that's meant to be for children, and that her clothes are being ruined and that she's catching her death of cold, because she is with the one she loves most in this world. She is laughing, just as her lover is, and while the sound is a little different, a little lower, less frantic and more indulgent, it is not out of place.

They are both smiling like there will be no tomorrow.

The rain is torrential, it is cold, it is unwelcome, and it is miserable. All the same, China and Clarabelle are happy.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Apocalyptic fluff is fun. :3**

**~Mademise Morte, February 25, 2012.  
><strong>


	30. 1:030:UnderTheRain

Whenever I smell rain, I think of you.

I can't really help it. It's an automatic response, after so many years. The smell of earth and water and of new life is tied inextricably to the image of you, laughing and running and being so completely at peace that all who beheld you couldn't help but to be calmed too.

The rhythm of raindrops on rooftops and roads is your laughter, more melodic than any song, and the light that curves in through the clouds is your radiance, and all of my memories of happiness are dancing with you under the pouring rain.

You have ever been my rock, Clarabelle, for all your instability and your wanderlust and your vacancy. We have always hungered for the same things, and I suppose it is lucky that we have found each other, because I can't imagine what life would be like without you.

I am fickle too, as unbound as the wind for which I have been named. _Zephyr_, the West Wind, the traveler without an aim. It is a comfort to know that wherever I travel to, it will never be that far from the rain, never that far from you.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I like fluff very muchly. x3**

**~Mademise Morte, March 1, 2012.  
><strong>


	31. 1:031:flowers

China Sorrows smells of ginger, and so the corners of Murder's eyes are crinkling up, partially from amusement, and partially from the sting that ginger in particular has.

"What the Hell have you been drinking?" she asks softly as she traces the line of China's shoulder with an almost hesitant fingertip, shivering just as much as China is, though hiding her sense of slight fear and immense awe much, much worse.

"Tea, of course," China answers, as matter-of-fact as ever, despite the somewhat unusual situation. "What else would I drink?"

Murder just laughs, and China takes the chance to clasp her best friend's wrists, gently but firmly.

Around them, the garden is flurried and blurred with scents, from all the various beautiful flowering plants that are the absolute pride and joy of China's father.

Murder's senses are clouded even more from the overload that is being presented to them, in a hazy-dizzy-off-kilter kind of way, and she finds herself moving almost without thought. In a strange manner, she is not here at all, and in another, she has never been more present.

All through it all, though, the one thing she doesn't lose track of is the smell of ginger.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: By the way, if at any point you think I should switch the rating on this to M, please do let me know.**

**~Mademise Morte, March 14, 2012.  
><strong>


	32. 1:032:night

She tastes the salt of sweat and the sweetness of want and something slightly other that she is not entirely sure about but is perfectly happy with not completely understanding, because she doesn't care that much to be aware of the situation in any case, because she's not quite sure she believes what's happening.

Cloaked in the safety, in the quiet and the dark, of the night-time, Tanith is tangled into Valkyrie, and whilst neither of them is completely in control of themselves, there is certainly no arguing that this is anything but consensual.

That's the nice thing about the night-time, Valkyrie is thinking absently, distantly, from the tiny part of her mind that disconnects and sits on her shoulder and just watches, never really interfering. It takes away the ghosts and your inhibitions, and it leaves just you.

What you want, what you think, what you feel – everything that keeps hidden even from yourself by the glare of the day.

Or maybe it just takes the sun out of your eyes, Valkyrie thinks, and then she stops thinking coherently, because Tanith is beautiful by the moonlight, and there is nothing more of Valkyrie that can remain separate any longer.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I really, really, really love valith.**

**~Mademise Morte, March 14, 2012.  
><strong>


	33. 1:033:expectations

The expectations are heavy, and sometimes she wishes that they were never there.

The dead weight pulls at her limbs, and she can't run any more. It scares her, and a scared Tanith Low is not a particularly stable Tanith Low. She tends to hurt things when she's scared – sometimes others, but mostly herself.

And now all the energy that comes with fear is trapped inside her because she cannot escape it, and now she is falling apart from the inside.

She can't do anything about it, of course, because that's not what is expected of her, and so she lives out her sickly, twisted, miserable life as well as she can, slowly breaking under the pressure.

And then she turns twenty and something happens that she never expected, and the shackles break and she is strong, and she runs like she is being chased by all of Hell. She acts it too, taking on a persona of an altruist, slaughtering monsters and telling herself that they are like the people who asked so much of her.

Until she meets Valkyrie Cain, she refuses to submit to the expectations of others. With Valkyrie, though, it doesn't seem so bad.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Kehe. =3**

**~Mademise Morte, March 31, 2012.  
><strong>


	34. 1:034:stars

The afternoons I spent sipping caffeinated drinks and watching girls with peroxide hair and stars on their cheeks seem so far away from here. I am slouching on the park bench once again, and my back is curved out and protesting this, because I am more unfit than ever.

I have missed this place, with its quiet and its slumber and its rain and its passers-by with the curious expressions. It no longer hums in quite the way it used to, though, all those years before my time of imprisonment, and it is with regret that I register that that place, and the person I was there, are gone.

There are trees here now. Great, beautiful, grand trees, with arching branches and heavy curtains of leaves that whisper on occasion, when they are rustled, and I can see my lovely with her peroxide hair, walking to me down the gravel-rock path. For a moment, it seems the same.

Her cheeks are bare now, though, and her face is older, like mine must be. The magic is gone, and all there is left is familiarity, comfort, a lack of other options.

The trees whisper, and their leaves block away the stars.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Cassandra/Carol, perhaps?**

**~Mademise Morte, April 6, 2012.  
><strong>


	35. 1:035:HoldMyHand

Please trust me this time.

I know how unreliable I've been so far – Gods, how I know. I know my track record, because I've lived through it, stuck inside this skin, a silent screaming spectator to more sin than I ever thought I'd care to see. I'm not always in control of myself, and I'm not always sure what _myself_ means. I've been so many people, and sometimes I am none of them.

But this time will be different, and everything that has ever called itself a part of me agrees on that, because this time there is you, and oh Gods, China, you are everything.

You make me want to change, to be a single person that will love you until the end of time, a speech recited every day by those sweet lips until the words cease to rhyme, and you make me want to be so much more than silent screaming spectator.

You make it stop seeming like sin, and, Gods, China, how long it has been nothing but sin. We both know that much too well.

So, please, China, please. Take my hand, and trust me.

This time, I won't let go. I'll never let go.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: This morning when I woke up, all I could remember from my dreams was that someone had posted a China/Valkyrie story and I was so happy because finally I wasn't the only one writing stupid sentimental Sapphic fluff.  
><strong>

**And I realized that it was only a dream, and so I wrote this, because one person writing stupid sentimental Sapphic fluff is better than none.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, April 26, 2012.  
><strong>


	36. 1:036:PreciousTreasure

China Sorrows is a collector, and so she goes through life looking at things just a bit differently from others. She sees personality in inanimate objects, and she sees the inanimate objects in the people that she strings along in her wake, bobbing like so much flotsam. She's gotten so many of them onto her side over the years, even when there wasn't really much of a side that agreed with her completely.

After all, no one ever really does agree with her completely, because not much of anyone is a match for her. She's gone long past formidable, and right into the realm of the undefeatable, the indefatigable, though people have tried. Oh, how they have tried.

Valkyrie's different. She always was, she with her sharp tongue and her bright eyes and her indomitable wit. They argue whenever they speak, because people like that don't just let arguments slip by, but they love them so much that they don't seem like arguments at all.

China has collected many treasures over the years. She is, after all, a collector, and she goes through life looking at everything skewed. Nothing has ever seemed to her quite as precious, though, as Valkyrie.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Yet more China/Valkyrie fluff. =D  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, April 27, 2012.  
><strong>


	37. 1:037:eyes

When Clarabelle sees something that catches her interest, and things of this kind are many to her, ranging from a moment of glitter as light flies off the razorblade tip of a scalpel towards the haven that a panel of glass provides to a feather from a feral pigeon that has been flying long beyond the day it should die, she is all eyes, or so Kenspeckle has told her.

She has pretty nice eyes, she thinks. She likes her eyes, like she likes all of herself. She's pretty secure in her own flesh, which she supposes should be surprising since no one else really seems to be. She likes her body, though. It's a good container for her mind.

When Valkyrie Cain enters the room where she is working, the thing that catches Clarabelle's attention first is the way that you can see muscle underneath the matte black of her coat, and so Clarabelle bites her own lip, which she thinks is okay as far as mouths go, though she doesn't care about its continued well-being much, to stop herself from grinning as she looks up to the younger girl's face.

At that particular moment, she is all eyes.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I liked weaving this one together...  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, April 27, 2012.  
><strong>


	38. 1:038:abandoned

Philomena Random quite often feels like people don't quite get her, and she's not really wrong in this, because not very many people do. It's not that she doesn't make an effort to be accessible, since she really does, it's just that she usually fails miserably.

It all stems from her line of work, she sometimes thinks, trying to console herself. It's because she spends her time fixing things and making them more whole and dealing with abandoned wrecks of recollection that are nothing but regretted, long after the fact. It's because she gives a home to all the things that nobody wants, and that shines through, in the end.

It's because she's given more of herself than she has to give, and there is no compromise that she can make anymore, and _people know that_.

They can see them in her eyes. The skeletons, the ruins, the doubts and the worries and the fears. They can see the childhood nightmares and the adult repressions and every internalized guilt that ever has been.

And they can see the one thing in her that she can't, and that is that she is exactly as abandoned as everything she tries to rescue.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: A nonpairing one, but I like this version of Philomena.**

**~Mademise Morte, April 27, 2012.  
><strong>


	39. 1:039:dreams

"What are your dreams, Tanith?" Valkyrie is lying tucked into the crook of her lover's arm, with her eyes fluttering between _closed_ and _slightly, slyly open, the better to contemplate Tanith's midriff_.

"You mean nightmares?" Tanith's voice is light and wry and doesn't much sound like she has only just woken up.

"I meant plans for the future, but yes, nightmares would work too."

"Losing you," says Tanith simply and immediately, and she struggles up a little bit, pausing to thoughtfully untangle her hair from Valkyrie's. "I mean, there's a lot more than that, but it all amounts to the same thing."

"Oh," says Valkyrie, calculatedly careless. "Well, you don't have to worry, then," she says after a moment, and she twists herself around to wrap her arms around Tanith. "I'm planning to spend the rest of my life with you, after all."

"Is that your dream, then?" Tanith smiles tiredly.

"That's my plan for the future, yes," says Valkyrie impishly. "There's a lot more than that, of course, but it all amounts to the same thing."

"And your nightmares, then?"

"Unimportant," says Valkyrie, and when she looks into her lover's eyes, she almost believes that they are, indeed, _unimportant._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Sometimes I forget how incredibly cute I find this pairing, and then I suddenly and forcibly remember.**

**~Mademise Morte, May 3, 2012.  
><strong>


	40. 1:040:rated

"What are you doing here?" China asks, keeping her voice and her tone as moderate as she can. Her arms are folded and she is glaring at the giggling little schoolgirls who are poring over her anatomical texts.

"Research," one of them pipes up cheerfully before returning to her book.

"Could you possibly be a little more quiet whilst conducting your research, then? You certainly aren't the only patrons of the library."

"Of course, Mistress Sorrows," another one of them says, looking decently contrite. "We'll try to minimize the sound."

China bites her tongue, wondering if it's really worth asking the obvious question. Her curiosity gets the better of her, though, as always it has.

"Why are the books so very amusing, in any case?"

The girl who first spoke nods. "These are incredibly old texts, as I'm sure you know, and while the writers were geniuses for their times, they are incredibly inaccurate in many of their conclusions, especially those related to the physical rather than the magical. I find this to be deeply ironic, and thus amusing in the extreme."

"Is that all?" China asks, smiling at the speaker, who is now smiling back.

"Well, that and genitalia."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Kehe :3  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, May 20, 2012.  
><strong>


	41. 1:041:teamwork

When I let go of your hand, I want to know that there will be something to catch me, to save me from the Hell that is uncertainty, and until the day that there is any person in this universe whom I trust as entirely as I trust you at this moment, I will not let go of you. Not for my life, not for yours, and certainly not for the world.

You've always been around to save me, to shield me from the worst of it all, and you've never made it seem like a favor or condescension of any kind. It was a courtesy, and you always made it clear that it wasn't because I couldn't handle it, but because I could.

Now, though? I don't think I'd even know where to begin.

You are brilliant, Nye, and beautiful and all things that are bright. You have been my savior and my guide when the fields of my life were overtaken by blight, but Nye, you don't know what you've stolen from me when you were so busy giving.

I don't blame you. It was my fault too, but that doesn't matter, is it?

I'm nothing without you.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Clarabelle/Nye, bien sur.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, June 17, 2012.  
><strong>


	42. 1:042:StandingStill

Time stands still by her bedside, fingers clasped like locketwork and eyes as grave as marble being cut en masse from the mountain to be turned into tombstone by hands so knowing in their ways that you could cut them from their master's arms and they would still be able to shape stone.

The birds hanging on strings over her bed—_what birds? I can only see feathers_—are patient-impatient-waiting-for-the-moment-of-movement. They want to fly, but all they can do at this point is fall.

Her spine is shattered like her pocket mirror that lay on her table until she threw it at the wall. It didn't stop resembling her, though she didn't want to see that. She never wanted to see anything.

She's gotten her wish. Time is standing still by her bedside, sinking into the dirt like roots that thirst so much that they will travel through the totality of the world to get what they want, splitting through the marble that was cut en masse from the mountain and eventually finding the mountain itself, and splitting that too, because they are thirsty and water loves mountains.

Her body is still lying broken in the desert, where time isn't.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I think Crystal would have liked the Marble Mountains in Vietnam.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, July 14, 2012.  
><strong>


	43. 1:043:dying

**KOTW spoilerie lies within.**

* * *

><p>Lenka Bazaar knows that she will have no time for last regrets in the moments before her demise, because when that day comes, and she knows exactly how she will come because even at her weakest she can feel that certainty hanging over her like so much knife, she will have no time for any thought at all. So as she steps out of her house, shrugging off the weight of the life she has lead from her shoulders, she takes the moment to look for regrets.<p>

She finds them.

As she walks away from the shell that has been her inhabitance for the last decades of her existence, she forces herself to keep her eyes open. She'd like to close them. To cringe. There are regrets and they are heavy and just now she realizes she'll have to leave them behind as well. Obviously. She has to leave everything behind.

That was all very well when it was only the facts of her life, of course. The house and the books and the routine. But now it's faces, staring at her through the veil of her memories, and they are accusative.

No better time for last regrets, she supposes.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: This could probably be better. I could probably be more awake.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 4, 2012.**


	44. 1:044:TwoRoads

She has spent her life with all the paths she could take splayed out before her eyes like the work of some madman who thinks he could turn murder into an art and all she has ever been able to think of this is that the only shape and form unrepresented in this multitude of universes is a straight line.

She's always walked it anyway, with no care for her feet. For the bruises and the cuts and the hours of aching because she doesn't even once consider changing her shoes into something more sensible because that would mean forsaking the single state of sense in the ever-arcing confusion.

Her life intersects with others, as well it should, and she relishes the encounters, takes something of the curve along with her on her road, but as much as she wishes they could stay with her, not just their artifacts but their truths, their essence, their soul, they cannot, because she walks the straight line where none have ever been cut.

She is lonely, of course. She is desperately, desperately lonely. She makes no move to change the path she walks, though. She doesn't even think of it as an option.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: This is China, with a brief nod to Scapegrace. You know, in case the shoe reference didn't make it obvious enough.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 21, 2012.**


End file.
